


IT IS SAID THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE FOREST. DON'T SERVE THE DEVIL!

by tatersalad5001



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Gold & Silver & Crystal | Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal Versions
Genre: Based on Actual Playthroughs, Bootleg Game, Gen, Pocket Monsters: Vietnamese Crystal | Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal, Pokemon Journey, Randomized Pokemon, for the viewers i guess i'll specify that it's also, i'll call it pokemon crystal here for the tags i guess but in reality it's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:04:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatersalad5001/pseuds/tatersalad5001
Summary: Here's the thing about New Bark Town. It's a pretty small town, so news travels fast. By the time I set out for my Pokemon journey, one of my neighbors beat the Elite Four and became the new champion. And he beat them with only one Pokemon. The only Pokemon he had was a single Celebi. Defeating the Elite Four like that was incredible, and it inspired me. I wanted to be a strong trainer just like that. That's why I set out on my own journey.The world as I know it... Well, you know this world as the world of Pokemon. We call it something else here. Here, it’s all about Elfs and budges and monster coaches, not Pokemon and gym badges and trainers. But it’s all the same. Still, this isn’t quite the world you know. Because there’s one key difference.Something is very wrong with this world.





	IT IS SAID THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE FOREST. DON'T SERVE THE DEVIL!

**Author's Note:**

> If you've never experienced the world of Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal before, I highly recommend first reading either [this LP](https://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Vietnamese-Crystal/), [this wiki page](https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Pocket_Monsters_Crystal_Version), or both, so you know what you're getting into here. This game is a trainwreck of a translation, yes, but it's also extremely prone to crashing due to either bugs in the original japanese version of Crystal, or trying to display text way longer than the game is supposed to (pieces of dialogue, using items with long names, the moves Rest and Spike Cannon, MIXING FORK and CLIP SP-STAR respectively... any Pokemon using those moves will crash the game, but if you catch a Pokemon with one of those moves, your game won't crash, but it certainly will mess up that Pokemon's summary screen. Crashes can corrupt your save file, too.) so uh, yeah. This fanfic isn't going to use the game's garbled up language in any way other than the Pokedex is the Illustrated Handbook.
> 
> I like knowing how games works, I like learning about game bugs and glitches and how they happened, and I like knowing how games break. Vietnamese Crystal is something of a goldmine in that respect. The more I play, the more I mess with it, the more I learn about it. Randomizing the game helps in that respect, and yields more interesting mysteries. Like, if you randomize the game, you can't look at the Pokedex, even though if you don't randomize Vietnamese Crystal, you...can. So I keep coming back to it, occasionally, playing new randomized files and updating friends on the results. More crazy things keep happening so I keep coming back.
> 
> This fanfic is...based on some of those randomizer playthroughs. If my memory is correct, I randomized things like which Pokemon appear where, what their moves are, what picked up items are, what Pokemon trainers have, and all that stuff.

The world of Pokemon is not a welcoming one. The world of Pokemon is not a safe one.

This is a world designed to tear you apart at the seams and break you until you can’t remember who you are anymore.

The world as I know it... Well, _you_ know this world as the world of Pokemon. We call it something else here. Here, it’s all about Elfs and budges and monster coaches, not Pokemon and gym badges and trainers. But it’s all the same. Still, this isn’t quite the world you know, either. Because there’s one key difference.

Something is very wrong with this world.

Here's the thing about New Bark Town. It's a pretty small town, so news travels fast. By the time I set out for my Pokemon journey, one of my neighbors beat the Elite Four and became the new champion. And he beat them with only one Pokemon. The only Pokemon he had was a single Celebi. Defeating the Elite Four like that was incredible, and it inspired me. I wanted to be a strong trainer just like that. That's why I set out on my own journey.

You can call me Jesus, by the way. I can see the look on your face. It's a perfectly normal name where I'm from. There's no gods in this world, either.

The new champion got his Celebi from Professor Elm, just like any trainer starting out in this town. Professor Elm has different Pokemon to choose from every time someone new starts their journey. He's constantly catching different Pokemon and studying them. So when I started my journey, my partner was a Hitmonchan named Macho. I didn’t set off to become the best with only his support, though. Soon, I had an entire team of strong Pokemon by my side. Not far from home, I even met a Gengar who looked completely different that any other Gengar I’d ever seen. His name was QStar, and he was my most powerful friend.

Brute force wouldn’t get us anywhere, though. We needed to be in sync, display flawless teamwork, and always keep a sharp eye out. When I was on my way to obtaining my third badge, it was clear it was a lot more dangerous out there than it used to be.

I made the mistake of opening my mailbox, once. I’d never gotten any mail or sent any out in my life, so there wasn’t any reason to. My mailbox was full of all this junk mail from different people I didn’t recognize. Just looking at it gave me a headache. For hours afterwards, people didn’t look like themselves, and I couldn’t even figure out where I was. And the next time I went home, I had all these things in my room I’d never seen before, posters and dolls and plants I knew weren’t mind, that no one had gotten for me, nkt even my mother. Games I never heard of before sat by the wall. I could only hope they weren’t stolen. And I don’t know what was happening with my radio, but... Professor Oak’s show was my favorite, yet anytime I listened to it I had to lay down for a few hours before I could even walk again. The same thing happened whenever I opened that handbook he gave me after Professor Elm gave me Hitmonchan.

Then I went to the Goldenrod City Pokemon Communication Center snd ended up with a JS Ball shoved into my hands by one of the people working there.

This wasn’t mine, I wasn’t supposed to receive anything like this. It kind of looked like a Poke Ball, so I figured Kurt might know what to do with it. There was a shrine in the forest by his house, and he told me to put it there. As I entered the forest, an old woman told me not to serve the devil.

That was just moments before I put the JS Ball in the shrine, and met the devil in the flesh.

It was a Celebi. Like the Celebi who was my neighbor’s partner. People like to think that there’s one of certain powerful Pokemon species, and that just isn’t the case. Celebi, Lugia, Entei, Articuno...there’s a lot of them out there.

As I fought this Celebi, though, I had an odd feeling.

That odd feeling was the last thing I thought about before I passed out.

I woke up in the forest again, JS Ball in my hand again. I put it back in the shrine and the Celebi returned for a second round. Some people say Celebi has the ability to mess with time. Maybe that was what was happening as I repeatedly woke up and fought the Celebi over and over again. It was way stronger than any of the Pokemon I had with me. By the time I won, it felt like someone had kicked me in the side of the head repeatedly. Maybe that Celebi was the reason I kept passing out, too. It’s hard to say.

But I’m starting to think catching that Celebi was a mistake. Weird things keep happening ever since I caught that demon. I’ve run into more Celebi and other Pokemon who have done the same thing to me. Sometimes battled trainers with Pokemon like that. And those trainers would just let me battle them again after I faded out like we never met.

I solved puzzles in ancient ruins. I passed trials testing the strength of my character. And finally, despite everything that keeps getting thrown at me, I just caught my final gym badge. I can finally face the Elite Four.

The Elite Four are in another country. Even now that my neighbor’s the champion. So, if I want to face him, I’ll have to leave this country, too.

It’s a different place entirely. There’s no way all the bad stuff that happened to me over here could happen over there, I’m sure of it. Maybe I’m letting my guard down, but....

I have my first partner, Macho, the Hitmonchan. QStar thr Gengar, who Professor Elm told me looks different because he’s shiny. It’s rare, and I’m lucky we ever met. Yeehaw’s here, too, she’s a Clefable who used to be a Togepi when she was a boy. Gaara the Entei specializes in attacks that make multiple hits at once, and they’re a fairly heavy hitter. Knife the Beedrill is good at draining the enemy’s health slowly over time. And...getting to the Elite Four will require dangerous travel over water. The Gyarados named Lightning McQueen isn’t a regular member of my team, but he can help us navigate the water safely. Deep down, I’m sure we’re an incredible team.

These trainers don’t have anything too difficult to deal with, either. Some Ninetales, a Weedle, Sunflora...

Wait, Sunflora... Wasn’t that

* * *

 

My name’s Deez. Might be a different name than you were expecting, but it’s pretty normal around here.

My older sister started her Pokemon journey awhile ago. Professor Elm had a Hitmonchan to be her first partner, and she was so excited to have him as a friend. She’s pretty smart, even if she’d deny it. Our neighbor never figured out how to catch Pokemon without...blacking out in the process. Same thing happened to my sister, too, at first, but she figured out how to overcome it. She noticed she was fine until she tried to look at the Illustrated Handbook entry for the Pokemon she’d caught for the first time. So she just stopped looking at it, and she could catch as many Pokemon as she wanted.

She built up a whole team, collected all the badges, she was ready to take on the Elite Four. I know that because she visited home to check in often. She would always show me new members of her team while she was home. I think QStar was one of her favorites, he wasn’t just shiny, he had a powerful Electric attack that instantly took down almost anything it hit. There weren’t many Pokemon he couldn’t defeat.

But it’s been months since she left for the Elite Four. She hasn’t come back, and no one’s heard from her since.

It’s time for me to take my own Pokemon journey now. Professor Elm gave me a Jynx. She knows that same Electric attack that QStar has. Maybe it’s a sign, maybe it isn’t, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t need a sign to know my path.

I’m going to figure out what happened to my sister. I’m going to find her. I’m going to bring her home.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in, uh, mourning and despair. That "Deez" playthrough just started, so, I'll discuss that "Jesus" playthrough a little bit.
> 
> Celebi, Lugia, and Sunflora all had moves that crashed the game, there were probably more that I didn't run into but that's the long and short of that. When you catch a Pokemon you've never caught before, you get to read its Pokedex entry immediately, but randomizing this game makes the Pokedex crash the game, making obtaining non-gift Pokemon impossible. I figured out that if you use a cheat code to make all Pokemon in the Pokedex registered as caught, you can bypass that and can successfully catch Pokemon. I also used a cheat code to maximize the amount of money I had because I didn't want to think about money. I used no other cheat codes, and the cheat codes I described don't have any side-effect like this, so I'm not sure how the following happened.
> 
> During that 'Jesus' playthrough, by the time I reached Ecruteak City, I had a mailbox full of junk mail, a lot more than what the max allowed number of mail is supposed to be, that was all either full of 9's or would crash the game upon opening. If I closed the Mailbox, the game wouldn't crash, but my player character would disappear, room layouts got messed up, and any other character that walked around would morph between different sprites as they walked, which was super freaky! At the same time, when I went home, I had every single type of decoration available, even ones that were Pokemon Stadium 2 exclusive, and I swear I didn't do anything to make that happen myself. (The room decorations are all about as gibberishy as you're expecting). Also, the first time I entered the Goldenrod City Pokemon Communications Center (which wasn't when I first got there, I'd been there for awhile at least) I was given the JUJU/JS Ball, which is the event-only GS Ball used to start the Celebi event. Doing the legit evevnt is obviously impossible for this case, and I didn't do anything to try to kick-start this event either. It just happened.
> 
> I played through and got the first eight badges and all that and got about halfway to the Elite Four when a trainer's Sunflora crashed the game. That was whatever, that was fine, I figured, I'll just restart and load my file and all that. But that Sunflora's crash actually corrupted my save file. Any save states I have would be about a couple of badges back, and I just don't have the strength to catch up and go on with those save states. So that journey ended in Kanto, and... I was really attached to that save file. QSTAR was a legit completely by luck shiny and I loved him. YEHAW was trans and that was beautiful. So much weird stuff was happening on that file and losing it all was really upsetting.
> 
> So I guess I made it into a fic and that's that!


End file.
